Mr. Soule Renovates His Dream House, Part 1

If you ever read the book or saw the movie, "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House," you'll have had a preview of our time of fun and games this season.  We have long planned to do something about the parlor/library and the guest quarters in this cottage, but we are glad we waited (judiciously) for Leenie and Greg's visit and sage advice – no pun intended.  Leenie recommended going with Sage Green for the repainting of the floor, and we are indebted to her for a wonderful bit of good decorating advice.  

The burden of choosing the right depth and tint of the paint was worse than we'd guessed, however; you have NO idea how many shades of green exist in this world of ours.  I should have guessed, looking out every morning at all the varied greens in our garden and forest; but I really thought that if I said "sage green" everyone would know exactly what I was talkin' about. Nope.

"Well, let's just look at these color samples," piped the cheery woman at the paint store – and she spread out before us on her counter a veritable Garden of Eden selection.  "Do you want a slightly blue cast, or a bit of yellow perhaps?  How about a soupcon of grey, or brown, to add calming notes?"

I needed a calming drink, at that point. The light from the store windows and the overhead fluorescence in no way resembles the filtered forest-y light that slants into our parlor.  We searched our tired memories – did the color on the green walls of the parlor hold a hint of blue? or yellow? brown? grey?  Who knew?

We randomly chose a couple of shades we thought might work, and while she mixed those up in quarts and shook the hell out of them on the power mixer, we tried to choose yet another shade of the ubiquitous Green to cover the Knossos Palace Red that disgraced the walls of the alcove in the corner of the parlor. After our exhaustive search we just pointed at a couple of Forest Green tints and said: "We'll try those."

Home to our mountains, we went; and daubed the edges of the floor and red walls with the choices.  Alas: none of the four paints was worth a damn, seen in situ.  The two choices for the floor were a pale pastel, suitable for a little girl's bedroom wall perhaps, but silly on a floor.  The one shade I sort of liked for the walls reminded John of his duties repainting Army trucks, back in the day – a poor choice indeed.

Finally we got the inspiration, belatedly, to run around the cottage and pick up other green things we had that we liked. We held them up against the present green walls and found a pillowcase and a ribbon that seemed to convey the right shades.  Then, after more debate, we realized that we were up against an insurmountable problem: too many shades of green were going to make our parlor look like a damp and mossy cave.

New plan: how about a light golden tint for the Knossos Korner?  Eureka!  We shuffled through all the little paint chips we'd brought home, and found the one we liked: but it was dubbed something like "Terrace Maple." 

"Aahh, what's in a name?" I screeched, in a horrible parody of Juliet's dissembling argument.  "It looks good to me, we're going with it."

Unlike Juliet, however (who discovered there's a whole world of trouble in having the wrong surname), I was right.  The first coat of both paints has proved that the second try was a big success.

We went back down to the paint store in Santa Cruz, picked out the right tints on that journey, and the painters arrived this morning.  As the base coats were brushed on the floor and walls, we could see with our own eyes, in our own house, that we had "done good."

Tonight and tomorrow we will be sleeping by the creek at Merrybrook Lodge, while the work is completed. In truth, we could sleep in our bedroom right here at the cottage, but we'd have no way to fix dinner or get anywhere near the kitchen at all, as that add-on room has no outside doors, and we can't walk across the parlor floor while the paint is wet – the only way to get from the bedroom or any of the entry doors to the kitchen.  At least that is my rationale for giving ourselves a couple of days of summer vacation at our favorite resort. With the cost of remodeling and refurnishing giving our budget a headache this year, we won't be doing any other "resorting" in 2009.

Tune in tomorrow, when Fran learns how to attach "before and after" photos to this blog!